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CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

T he cell they’d brought me to after weeks of bouncing around in the back of a carriage from Leergaith was surprisingly hospitable.

Perhaps it was because they’d chosen to transport me all the way to The Matriarch’s stronghold of Cinder Vale and I was being held beneath her palace where the highborn traitors would likely reside were they ever to act against their monarch.

Or perhaps it was simply that the Flamebringers liked to make their captives comfortable before torturing them.

Not that I’d been tortured either. In fact, all I had really been forced to endure in this place was long spans of boredom between Cyclops interrogations. Though I could tell my captors were growing weary of attempting to crack through my mental shields in that regard.

But did they really expect any less from a girl who had been raised as a Sinfair spy? I’d been trained to ward off Cyclops invasion from the age of eight and the assholes they’d sent to try and crack me open had nothing on the Fae I’d faced in my training as a child.

Still, this lengthy captivity couldn’t go on endlessly.

And I was uncertain as to why they hadn’t just strung me up and butchered me before a public audience yet.

Surely by now they knew they weren’t going to be able to steal any secrets from my mind.

I had to wonder if they were looking to trade me, perhaps barter me for some of their own prisoners of war or even try to exchange me for a piece of land my kingdom had stolen from theirs.

If that was their plan then I wished them luck. Stormfell had never once given in to bargains before and no Fae captured in war ever lived beyond a month in the dank cells we used to hold our prisoners.

I glanced at the small and only window in this underground chamber, the narrow slit letting in minimal light on the other side of my bars, the pane of glass so thin that I wouldn’t be able to crawl through it even if I did manage to get out of my cage and clamber up there.

All the same, I often found myself looking up at that thin window, almost as though I were expecting to find someone peering back at me through it one of these days.

I sighed, dropping down on the thin cot I’d been given to sleep on and staring up at the bars which ran above my head then beyond them to the intricately carved ceiling.

The room my cage stood in was grand. So grand I doubted it had ever been intended to hold a cell at all when it was built but the worn iron which encased me clearly wasn’t a new fixture by any means.

The door to the far side of the room had a wall built of flames barring it as an extra measure to keep me contained but as they’d locked cuffs around my wrists which blocked access to my magic, it hardly seemed necessary.

There had been guards standing in the room with me for the first week but after I’d lured two of them into trying to help me escape with my gifts, Mirelle Brimtheon had forbidden all of them from laying eyes on me.

My last victim had been the Cyclops who’d come to question me three nights prior.

He’d peered into my eyes with his one bulbous orb then suddenly found himself on his knees, begging to be of service to me in any way he could.

The Talons had managed to drag him away from me half a second before he’d managed to unlock my cuffs and since then I’d been left alone aside from the brief deliveries of food and water.

My toilet consisted of a hole in the ground which led to the sewers but it hadn’t taken much investigation to realise that the pipes were solidly built and no wider than my hand so there would be no escaping that way.

Which meant now I was left to wait, wondering if Bastian was really foolish enough to abandon me and claim himself seven years of bad luck in return.

I doubted it. Cayde’s behaviour had been self-serving to a fault so even if I were to think Bastian as lowly as that bastard, I had to believe he wasn’t dumb enough to curse himself for my sake.

So my hopes of escape lay in the hands of a Dragon who had been trapped in a cave for several hundred years and was born in an enemy land.

I doubted he had the first clue about how to get to Cinder Vale let alone how to find where I was being held if he made it here.

Not to mention that he was arguably one of the most infuriating men I had ever met who didn’t seem in the least bit concerned about causing trouble wherever he went and riling up the wrong people.

I was probably more likely to find him joining me in this cage than sneaking in here to break me out of it.

A bang sounded the door opening and the flames which had been blazing before them fell away, allowing three figures to stride into the room.

I turned my head to watch them approach but didn’t stand or even sit up. I remained laying on my cot, tangled pink hair spread around me, my crumpled Flamebringer clothes loose on my frame, and I waited.

The Matriarch was just as she’d been described in so many reports on the war, her face one I would have known from the sketches which were passed about listing our most valuable enemies and their crimes. But this wasn’t the first time I’d seen her in the flesh.

I’d been here in Pyros collecting the head of a traitor not so long ago after all, and I’d seen her then too.

Though that glimpse had been distant and there had been far more of her Talons surrounding her, otherwise she may have found that she was lacking a head herself.

Sadly, it hadn’t been possible for me to get close enough to be a threat to her then but here she was, a bird strolling into my cage for me to maul at.

The two men who followed her in were familiar too. Conscripts from Never Keep who had been there for their studies alongside me. I supposed that meant I’d missed graduation.

I couldn’t remember the name of the snarling one but the empty glower of the one on her right came back to me. I’d spent a little time stalking him after all, getting to know the flavour of the enemy who had so easily slipped into Dalia’s mind and trapped her in terrors.

Kaiser Brimtheon – the Fury.

“Well, well, if only I’d known I was receiving an audience with the magpie I would have gotten dressed up,” I drawled.

“Don’t you disrespect her, you dirty little Skyforger,” the snarling one barked, lunging towards the bars as if he intended to reach through them and wring my pretty neck.

I flipped my gaze to him. One sweep of my eyelashes and he faltered, stumbling in his charge then dropping to his knees and panting like the dog he so clearly was.

“Are you alright?” he gasped, the outstretched hands which had been curled aggressively softening as he spoke, his reach becoming tender and full of longing in place of aggression.

“Oh blossom of my loins,” he gasped. “What have they done to you?”

He started crawling for me but The Matriarch barked an order at Kaiser and he moved to grasp the idiot’s shoulder and restrain him.

“You will release North from your sway, Succubus,” Mirelle said firmly and I pushed myself to sit up with a sigh.

“I’m not using my gifts on him. He’s fallen for my allure which I can’t control – weak minded Fae often do this. They usually stop spouting poetry around the same moment as I run them through with my blade – if either of you has one to hand I’d be happy to oblige.”

Kaiser looked at me over the head of the struggling North, seeming to consider my words before heaving his arm back and punching the love-struck fool hard enough to send him sprawling onto his back.

“Ahh! What did you do that for?” North cried.

Kaiser straightened himself, shrugging. “She said pain was the answer to your problem. I figured I’d start easy and only try stabbing you if that wasn’t enough to break the spell.”

“What problem?” North snapped, glancing at me and the moment he did so he groaned, rolling onto his belly and trying to shuffle closer to the bars of my cage, though Kaiser took hold of his ankle to stop his advance.

“How long has she been in there? She needs warm hugs, she needs someone to tenderly massage every inch of her bountiful skin-”

“Ah yes, my bountiful skin,” I said dryly while Kaiser punched North again to shut him up.

“Turn him away from her,” Mirelle commanded, sounding exasperated, and Kaiser obediently forced North to face the back wall.

“Was that embarrassing?” North hissed. “Did I just make a fool of myself in front of her?”

“It was mortifying,” I assured him in reply to his words and he stiffened, though he wasn’t dumb enough to look back at me.

“You made a complete ass of yourself – but I wouldn’t worry, most weak-willed Fae do in my presence.

And regardless of the impression you might have liked to give me, I can assure you that you aren’t my type anyway. ”

“I’ll have you know that I’m everyone’s type. And I’m not weak-willed either. I have the will of Aries in my bones,” North snarled. “I’m never swayed from the path of righteousness and – ahh, why do you keep punching me?”

“You were spewing nonsensical things again. I assumed she was affecting you with her allure once more.” Kaiser stated and I snorted in amusement though Mirelle looked far from pleased.

“Silence your tongue or leave us, North.”

“Have you decided what to do with me then?” I asked, my tone as bored as I felt being trapped in this stupid box for weeks on end.

“Am I to become a spectacle at some grand execution? I have some thoughts on how you might like to do it if you want to hear them? I do so enjoy carving people apart and I’m practiced in keeping them breathing while I do so.

My record is seventeen pieces before death but a dear friend of mine pointed out that I could have taken the fingers one knuckle at a time to up the number. ”